Sarah Palin

For a couple of months now, I've been telling everybody willing to listen that McCain should recruit a woman as his running mate. The hard part, for a Republican like McCain, though, was finding one. Sarah Palin is, literally, the best he could get. No, she's not great, but the pickings were slim.

Since the Republicans are a party of old white men, by and large, just finding a woman at all is a problem. There are four Republican women in the Senate. Olympia Snow and Susan Collins, both of Maine, are both firmly pro-choice. So is Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas. That leaves Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, whose views on abortion, stem-cell research, and related issues are mixed, at best. Add to that the fact that her father, former Alaska governor Frank Murkowski, is not-very-successfully fighting corruption charges, and her unsuitability is incontrovertable. (Sarah Palin, by the way, had a role in bringing Frank Murkowski down.)

Apart from Palin, there are two female Republican governors. M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut is not only pro-choice, but she supports gay marriage. Lisa Lingle of Hawaii is, according to current Republican rhetoric, unsuitable by virtue of being from that weird, foreign land, Hawaii. She's also a Jeeeeewwwww, by the way.

There are 20 female Republicans in the House, most of whom are completely unknown outside their districts. Kay Granger of Texas gets national press once in a while, but she's pro-choice. I thought a strong contender might be Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado, a Pentacostal ranked "most conservative member of the House" by The American Conservative Union -- but she's so far to the right even McCain might find her scary.

I was really hoping McCain would take Bill Kristol's stupid advice and go with Joe Lieberman, thinking of the cognitive dissonance it would cause all those who won't vote for Obama because he's black. Would they have voted for a ticket with a Jew -- even a right-leaning, warmongering Jew?

Stay tuned.